“How did she call them?” said Carl.
“‘Cuff, cuff, cuff!’ That was while they were a good way off; when they came near,—‘Sukey’ and ‘Bessie,’ and ‘Jenny.’”
“And did they come when she called?”
“Left off eating as soon as they heard her; and then, when they had looked a little while to make sure it was she, they walked off slowly to come up to her.”
“How many cows were there?” said Carl.
“Sukey was a great black cow, and always marched first. Dolly was a beautiful red cow, and always was second. Three more came after her in a line, and when they got up with their little mistress she set off to go home, and the whole five of them followed gravely in order.
“The common was smooth and wide, not much broken with ups and downs and little footpaths—or cow-paths—tracking it in all directions. We wound along, my mistress and the cows, and I in my mistress’s pocket, through one and another of these; passing nothing in the shape of a house but a huge gloomy-looking building at some distance, which I afterwards found was a factory. A little way beyond this, not more than a quarter of a mile, we came to a small brown house, with one or two out-buildings. The house stood in a little field, and the outbuildings in another little field, close beside this one. Everything was small; house, and barn, and shed, and cow-field, and garden-field; but it was all snug, and neat, too.
“My little mistress—for she was slender, fair, and good, and such people we always call little——”
“But she wasn’t large, was she?” said Carl.
“She was not as large as if she had been grown up, but no more was she little for fifteen or sixteen. She was just right. She opened a gate of the barnyard, and held it while all the five cows marched slowly in, looking around them as if they expected to see some change made in the arrangements since they had gone out in the morning. But the old shed and manger stood just where they had left them, and Sukey stopped quietly in the middle of the barnyard and began to chew the cud, and Dolly and Bessie and Beauty took their stand in different places after her example; while Whiteface went off to see if she could find something in the mangers. She was an old cow that never had enough.”